In The Falling Light

by John L. Campbell

  And then there she was, stepping from behind a pillar, nervous as a doe and looking around, biting a thumbnail. She was dressed just as always, her milky skin a sharp contrast to the black leather jacket. He checked his watch. Midnight on the dot.

  She cut her eyes towards Denny – not really looking at me, he thought, because she’s not really there – then wrapped her arms about herself and stared down at the tracks. As she did every night.

  He was so curious about her. Had she been a jumper? One of those desperate wretches hurling themselves in front of a subway train, knowing it was incapable of stopping and that it would be quick. Had she wondered if it would hurt? Worried about what it would do to the motorman who had to go home with that on his conscience? Not that NYC subway drivers lost sleep over that, he mused. He suspected they’d all had it happen, and perhaps it was some dark bit of humor among them, like a special club, waiting for the new drivers to be initiated in that gruesome fashion before they could be a part of it. He wondered if they kept score of their jumpers.

  Denny shook his head. He was tired if he was daydreaming about that kind of nonsense. But then was it any crazier than what was standing just down the platform from him? He was unable to take his eyes off the girl. What had been so terrible in her life that she considered this a solution? He was more convinced than ever that she was a jumper. Why else would she appear here night after night.

  Then she turned her head and looked straight at him. Denny felt a shudder race through him, and now it was he who wanted to wrap himself in his own arms to ward off the sudden chill of having something from the other side truly see you.

  He looked away. She caught you staring, he thought.

  She can’t catch you staring, he argued. She’s dead.

  Staring at a dead girl, thinking she’s pretty. Almost as creepy as a forty-year-old man staring at a live girl half his age. A sudden panic hit him. What if she wasn’t a ghost? What if he was just over-tired, his weary mind making up things to amuse itself in the face of the daily grind? He’d actually been considering saying hello to her, just to prove his theory one way or the other, but he quickly dismissed it. If she was a spirit, might that not invite some malevolent act on her part? A dozen movies about possession zipped through his head. And if she was real, not a ghost, then the creepy old man might very well catch a face full of pepper spray, writhing helplessly on the filthy platform while she screamed for a transit cop.

  The rumble of the train filled the black tunnel, pushing warm air before it, and a dazzling light in the darkness grew steadily brighter. Denny looked back at her, and now there was no question. She was staring right at him, the heavy makeup around her eyes making her look even more dead. Heart suddenly thumping, he turned away, but he moved too quickly and the laptop bag swung out, the weight throwing him off balance. He stumbled, choked out a surprised little yell, and then he was falling, the tracks coming up fast, and the train roaring in faster.

  Madeline watched the ghost in the brown suit fade as he fell, and she shivered. It had been weeks since she’d seen the man fall in front of the train, and though the actual impact had been below eye level and out of view, she flinched every time she thought about it. It had happened right about this time of night, after she’d hustled down here after getting off her second shift job as a barista and bookseller. A memory she just couldn’t shake, that instant of surprised expression, and then… In her dreams she heard him scream, but she told herself it was probably just the brakes of the subway train as the driver tried to stop, knowing he couldn’t.

  Worse was the fact that he showed up again, and now she was seeing him every night at this time, his movements and death replayed over and over again. And the way he looked at her, so intensely, had her freaked out. As if her life wasn’t crappy enough. Sometimes she found herself envying him, darkly attracted to the idea that all of life’s hurts and disappointments and betrayals could be over with just…a…single…step.

  The train was coming, a howling mass which could make it so very simple.

  Just…a…single…step.

  Over on the bench, the bum watched first the man in brown, and then the punk girl fade from view as a phantom train squealed through the station. He snuffled and rolled over. Goddamn ghosts. He rubbed his chest, uncomfortable with the increasingly painful ache of his untreated heart disease and his numb left arm, and tried to drift off.

  A current of cold air spun out of the empty tunnel, and the Puerto Rican woman gripped her shopping basket more tightly and crossed herself, watching as the man, the girl and then the bum all faded from view. A quick glance to the right gave her a glimpse of the young man with the cell phone walking right through the tiled subway wall. She shook her head and whispered a prayer to the Blessed Mother, deciding that from now on she’d risk getting mugged and make herself walk the extra six blocks to another station, hopefully one not as haunted as this.

  And then she faded too.

  AMERICAN TRAGEDY

  The situation room under 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was crowded. All the civilians had their jackets off, ties loosened and sleeves rolled, but the Joint Chiefs looked starched in full uniform, chests heavy with medals. At the head of the table, the president sat with his palms on the polished wood, staring at the video feed at the far end of the room, entranced. How was this even possible?

  Sherwood, the top ranking Air Force general in the country, slid a dark blue folder in front of the president. Its cover read, TOP SECRET, Z-71. On screen, the president watched one of the living dead drift in zero gravity through the shuttle’s cargo bay. Its face was half gone and it was missing an arm. The name tag on its blue jump suit read, CMDR. MARKHAM. The president had shaken the man’s hand only weeks ago, wishing him well before his launch. Another body floated in the background, a woman trailing her intestines from a gaping rip in her belly. She was clawing the air in slow motion and gnashing her teeth.

  “Mr. President,” said Sherwood, “Z-71 represents our best choice scenario. We all concur.” The Joint Chiefs nodded.

  The president scanned the folder’s contents. “Dear God, you actually have scenarios for this?” He gestured towards the screen.

  “We have multiple scenarios, sir.”

  The president read. It was brief and to the point. “Those are our people up there, General. We should try to bring them home.”

  “They’re not people anymore,” said Sherwood. “You saw what happened in the earlier video.”

  Something had become lodged outside near the shuttle’s tail, out of view of the exterior cameras. Mission Specialist King went out on a space-walk to clear the debris, and minutes later there was a scream over the intercom. When the crew hauled King back inside, they discovered his suit had been ripped open, and a large piece of his abdomen torn away. Loss of oxygen, pressure and the deep cold of space had killed the man almost instantly. But he came back minutes later, and started biting. The entire crew of seven was lost inside thirty minutes, and now they floated up there, dead but somehow not as their craft traced a lazy orbit around the planet.

  “We can see they’re highly infectious and aggressive, Mr. President. Some have suggested they could be contained and studied, but the overall consensus is that we cannot risk allowing even one of them to get down here. If it got out, our government, our country, would cease to exist.”

  The president reread the scenario, then closed the folder. “Are we ready for the questions?”

  The general nodded. “We have scenarios to handle that as well, sir.”

  “Do it,” the president said, pushing the folder away and walking out.

  A phone call was made. In Houston, a shuttle pilot entered a highly restricted room which looked like a flight simulator. Using a satellite link, he tapped into the Explorer and flew it by remote, lining up its glide path around the planet, then guiding it through its descent into the atmosphere. At a predetermined point, another general inserted a red aluminum key into a panel and turned it.


  Shuttle Explorer burned up at high altitude, raining small bits of debris across Texas. The blast was captured on video and replayed repeatedly for the world. The president addressed the nation to mourn the loss of their heroes, and investigations were begun. Carefully fabricated video and flight recordings blamed a structural malfunction which the crew could not have detected, and no hint was ever given of how close mankind had come to extinction.

  Twelve years later, a Boy Scout hiking with his troop outside San Antonio discovered a charred, round object wedged between a rock and a cactus. When he pulled it out and turned it over in his hands, Commander Markham’s blackened and sightless head moaned, and bit the boy in the palm.

  SALTY

  Cornelius LaBauve was eighty-seven and missing somewhere in the Louisiana bayou. The passenger in the big pickup was worried that the old man had run into a local myth, but the driver had his money on liquor-induced drowning or gators.

  Cole Doucet arrived at the LaBauve place around eleven in the morning, carefully navigating the black Dodge 2500 down a long, muddy lane crowded by blackgum trees and green ash on either side, trying not to clip one of the side mirrors. Low-hanging branches scraped across the light bar on the roof, and curtains of Spanish moss trailed over the windshield as he drove down what was little more than a pair of parallel ruts. Even in daylight and over the noise from the bouncing truck he could hear the calls of bullfrogs in the rushes, his window open and his elbow cocked outside. The air conditioner was on low simply to keep the heavy, humid air in the cab circulating.

  Southwest of the towns of Bayou Cane and the adjacent county seat of Houma, this area was part of Terrebone Parish, an expansive wilderness of swamp, wetlands and forest punctuated by small communities. It was the kind of place where the waterways ran alongside the roads, where you could see the boats of shrimpers and oystermen lined up at the banks, or in wider sections, graveyards of submerged vessels, masts and the tops of cabins peeking above the surface. Here on the southern tip of Louisiana, it was a place which had been ravaged by Katrina not so very long ago. Ten percent of the population spoke French, and the people of the parish were a mix of Cajun, Choctaw and Creole, fishermen and trappers and hunters who lived well below the poverty line.

  The LaBauves were these people. Cole passed between a pair of wooden posts which at one time supported a chain between them, but the wood was past rotted and now it just lay in the mud, rusting and sinking into the lane. The Dodge went slowly around a long curve, and then the road ended at a wide, open area of packed clay and black mud, choked with junk. No less than half a dozen cars, stripped, without glass and sinking on their rims, rusted away along one edge of the space. Several washing machines sat jumbled in high grass next to a dented refrigerator, and a shopping cart without wheels was filled with bottles and cans. A low, tin-roof shack with a sagging covered porch was at the far end, and to the right, up against the tree line, a 60’s era school bus sat with its once-yellow paint now faded nearly white and streaked with trails of black mold. Fishing gear and frog gigs leaned up against it. As Cole put the truck in park, a broad-chested, black pit bull wiggled out from under the bus and started forward stiff-legged, its flat head low and its lips peeled back from yellow teeth.

  He ran up his window and draped an arm across the seat, looking at the dog. It stopped ten feet from the truck and just stood there, menacing. Cole scanned the rest of the area. There were some rusty oil drums, rows of muddy Coleman coolers, a wash line with a few flannel shirts and some shorts hanging from it, bullet-pocked highway signs leaning against the shack’s porch, and a battered outdoor grill with a dozen old propane bottles scattered in the weeds nearby. Near the shack, several lines had been strung between the trees. One held gutted catfish, another had four gator skulls dangling from it, the teeth removed.

  Cole tapped on the horn and waited. He didn’t want to try getting out with the pit in the yard, because he’d probably have to shoot it and that would start a whole new kind of trouble. Louisianans, and southerners in general, had a strong relationship with their dogs – sometimes more than they had with their own wives – and had been known on occasion to seek vengeance for the killing of their four-legged companions. He tapped the horn again.

  Brick LaBauve appeared from the interior of the school bus and eased down onto the steps, slouching against the frame with his hands in his pockets and staring with open contempt at the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries truck in his yard. He spit and folded his arms. Brick was shirtless, wearing cut-off camouflage shorts and muddy work boots. His head was shaved in a close crew-cut, and his muscled upper body was covered in tats, including a big piece across his chest depicting a voluptuous, naked she-devil with wings which stretched back up to his shoulders. At twenty five, he and Cole were the same age.

  Cole buzzed down the passenger window. “Brick, need you to chain your dog, son.”

  Brick chewed whatever he had in his mouth, probably tobacco, and spit again but didn’t move from the bus doorway. “He ain’t gonna hurt you.”

  “C’mon, now, put him on a chain. I’m not going away.”

  “Ain’t nothing here for you today, warden. Wasting your time.”

  “Glad to hear it. Means this won’t take long.”

  The Cajun sighed deeply, and then called to his dog. “Cephus! Over hear, now.” The pit bull reacted immediately, trotting to its master and pushing its big head against his leg until Brick scratched at his ear. Then it sat, tongue lolling out and watching the truck while the man clipped a heavy chain to its thick leather collar.

  Cole got out and walked towards the dog’s owner, a Sig .45, collapsible Asp nightstick and oversized can of pepper spray all secured to his service belt. The LDWF Enforcement Division had a federal commission, a six month training academy said to rival Marine boot camp (though Cole knew personally it fell short of the curriculum at Paris Island,) and had state-wide jurisdiction not only over hunting, fishing and boating, but rural law enforcement as well. Its agents were trained in tactical night assault, drug interdiction, and could operate boats and quads and even some aircraft. Yet swampers like Brick LaBauve insisted on calling them Game Wardens. It was not a term of endearment.

  Bayou people saw the agents as cops poking their noses in a hard-working man’s business, telling him what and where and when, in a place their families had called home since the first white men appeared in the area. A nuisance. An infringement on their personal liberties and right to live in and harvest what they chose from the swamps. And of course, the agents were the enemy when it came to the fact that sometimes a man out here had to do a little more to take care of his kin when times were hard, like hunt out of season or sell some guns or even cook a little meth. Most didn’t, of course, but even the ones not involved in illicit activity had no love for the LDWF.

  Brick stepped down from the bus and met Cole half way to the truck. They shook hands and nodded, young men who had known each other on and off over the years, and had even attended the regional high school together for a time until Brick dropped out at sixteen. They had never actually been friends, but there had been no bad blood between them. That changed somewhat as they got older. Cole went into the LDWF right after a four year tour in the Marines, eighteen months of it spent in Iraq, and it didn’t take long before he was reunited with his old schoolmate under different circumstances. Brick LaBauve was one of those who saw the law as an obstruction, something to be considered and then quickly dismissed. An original Crazy White Boy.

  “What you want, Cole?”

  “Just checking up. If I don’t, you won’t get your licenses back.”

  Brick shrugged. His gator tags and buck permits had been pulled after Cole caught Brick spotlighting gators. State law demanded that alligators could only be harvested between sunup and sundown, and two satisfactory inspections by the charging agent – validating that no additional laws were being broken - was required before he could apply for reinstatement.

  Cole wa
lked towards the row of coolers and began looking inside, Brick walking sullenly behind him. They held mostly catfish, with a few frogs and a good-sized turtle. Nothing to worry about.

  “So what happened with that TV show?” Cole asked, poking in another cooler.

  “Shit,” Brick spat into the grass, “those pansy-asses. Ain’t none of them a straight-shooter, scared of everything, ya know?”

  A month before Brick was caught spotlighting, a popular reality show about colorful swampers hunting alligators had come to Terrebone Parish, and after some research the directors selected Brick LaBauve to participate. Brick played it up for the cameras, enjoying the pay and basking in the glow of instant celebrity for a short time. Before long, however, what the show’s producers had originally thought to be a colorful backwoods redneck turned into the Crazy White Boy the locals knew him to be. He drove his boat too fast, wrecking it and hurting a cameraman. He drove a quad too recklessly and totaled it, along with another camera. He showed up for filming drunk or high or both, slurring and pawing at the female crew members, picking fights with sound technicians, arguing with the director and blurting obscenities. He told impossible lies about himself and even tried to light up a joint during filming. Most of this could have been forgiven, as reality TV was constantly pushing the envelope; over-the-top made solid ratings, and the truly inappropriate stuff could always be edited or bleeped out. But Brick was also an unapologetic racist, and loud about it, something which didn’t sit well with the network’s executive producer, an African-American who’d had his own life experiences with wild southern boys. Most of the Brick LaBauve footage would turn out to be useless, and the decision was made to cut him loose from the show with a minimal contract payoff.